First-party data: Personal touch at every interaction

Baggrund

Søstrene Grene’s digital strategy centres on understanding its customers deeply, with a strong principle of never using traditional marketing tactics like discounts and sales. Instead, Søstrene Grene seek to build lasting, meaningful relationships with customers by delivering hyperpersonalised “experiences like no other” based on first-party data.
The first-party data strategy can be divided into three pillars: control, insights and performance.

In Søstrene Grene we are dedicated to controlling and owning our own customer data – all centralised in the CDP. This ensures both compliance with legislation regarding consent and permissions as well as meeting best practices for data ethics. Søstrene Grene can enrich platforms like Meta and Google with event data for optimal utilisation of these platforms. Also, it ensures agility and more independence from big tech companies in the ever-changing landscape in terms of legislation, tracking, cookie depreciation, changes in algorithms etc.
Insights derived from both digital and offline touchpoints are invaluable. By gathering detailed knowledge about our customers’ preferences for categories, products and content, we can deliver personalised content across relevant media, enhancing the customer experiences across all touchpoints. The wealth of first-party data regarding purchase- and shopping behaviour as well as attitudes allows Anna & Clara to deliver context-specific and hyperpersonalised content. This enables Søstrene Grene to build a strong, loyal and future-proofed customer foundation and yield great commercial results.

The quality of data is crucial to achieve high performance – not just on owned media but also on paid, when it comes to adapting to the ever-changing best practices and algorithms across platforms. Powered by first-party data from our CDP, we can allocate and adjust marketing budgets and campaign content based on performance on different channels at any given time. The sisters’ wealth of first-party data allows us to take a strategically differentiated approach to segmentation and hyperpersonalisation, utilising best practices for each channel.

When building awareness and attracting new customers through channels outside of our direct control, Anna & Clara relie on the algorithms and best practices of each advertising platform fuelled by first-party data to target customers effectively, making use of the in-platform segmentation capabilities that these platforms offer.
In contrast, when it comes to owned channels and direct marketing efforts, the sisters focuse on creating hyperpersonalised customer experiences. This is possible due to the rich wealth of first-party data, which tailors content and product offerings to individual preferences, enhancing customer retention and encouraging conversions.

Løsning

By gathering and activating first-party data, transactional data, survey data and on-site behavioural data, we gain valuable insights into the target audience. This data is then utilised to deliver hyperpersonalised experiences across various touchpoints driven by a smart setup combining Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Relewise’s recommendation engine and a newly established in-house AI engine. By feeding the AI engine with first-party data, the sisters can create tailored, unique and personalised email and App push content for each individual subscriber. This means that Søstrene Grene can now send out approximately 130 million emails a year across +15 markets, where almost every email is personalised.

The new CDP is the backbone and key enabler, fueling the entire digital ecosystem with first-party data and integrating all digital platforms handling customer data such as the webshop, app and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This allows us to unify all customer data and manage customers as single-user profiles across various digital platforms. It also ensures agility in the evolving legal landscape of cookies and algorithms across platforms. For example, when Google Analytics was made illegal for a period, Søstrene Grene could replace Google Analytics with Indicative thanks to its CDP and wealth of first-party data.

When segmenting, we, at Søstrene Grene, enrich the algorithms on Meta and Google with first-party data to effectively segment and refine targeting. Built-in features in mParticle then help identify and utilise the most appropriate marketing channel for each customer. Customer preferences are well-known and stored as data fields for each customer profile, which can be activated accordingly.
To maintain this large-scale personalised outreach, continuously working on lead intake is essential. We collect data from potential leads, using interactive elements like gamification and app-based customer flows. With the strategic focus on continuous lead intake, we have evolved from having only four data points per customer to a comprehensive set of 260 data points – all gathered in compliance with GDPR and with data ethics in mind.

One of our latest initiatives is an increased focus on capturing offline data in physical stores, bridging the gap between online and in-person shopping experiences. This enables even more nuanced segmentation of customers, distinguishing between single, multi and omnichannel shopping behaviours. This expansion in data collection allow us to deepen our insights, moving beyond just purchase history to incorporate customer behaviours, attitudes and contextual information for extremely personalised experiences.

Resultat

Anna & Clara's setup clearly shows the significant business value utilising and activating first-party data across channels yield. By leveraging data in personalised, direct-to-customer interactions, we have successfully enhanced Customer Lifetime Value, increased purchase frequency and boosted the number of repeat customers.

• 2523% increase in online revenue from customers with active email permissions reaching +175 mio. DKK in 2023.
• 127% increase in subscribers’ Customer Lifetime Value from 2021 to 2023.
• 196% increase in returning customers from March 2021 to March 2024.
• Average number of purchases from returning customers went from 2.3 per subscriber in 2021 to 4 purchases per subscriber in 2023.
• 441% increase in new customers with email permission from March 2021 to March 2024.

Subscribers vs. avg. online customer
• Customers with email permission have a CLV that is +52% higher compared to the average online customer – and the CLV for customers with both email and app push permissions is 151% higher!!
• Days between purchase: 53 days vs. 135 days
• Avg. number of purchases: 2.4 vs. 1.6
• Re-purchase rate: 46% vs. 20%

CLV evolution for subscribers vs. avg. Online customer
• 2024: 23% increase in CLV for subscribers and 52% higher than avg. online customer
• 2023: 30% increase in CLV for subscribers and 33% higher than avg. online customer
• 2022: 42% increase in CLV for subscribers and 18% higher than avg. online customer
• 2021: 4% higher CLV for subscribers compared to avg. online customer

Performance on AI-generated mail content that activates first-party data
• Open rates increased with 13,81%
• Click rates increased with 25,93%

Performance on manual product recommendations vs. personalized product recommendations:
• Conversion rate: 4.53% vs. 9.46%

Increase in known customers and data points:
• 2023: 1.000.000 customers & 260.000.000 data points
• 2024: 1.500.000 customers & 380.000.000 data points